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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

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Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#271

Post by sathish316 »

outlace wrote: post #11

The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…

> I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles.

Agree with this. I’ve been trying to make LLMs come up with creative and unique word games like Wordle and Uncrossy (uncrossy.com), but so far GPT-5.2 has been disappointing. Comparatively, Opus 4.5 has been doing better on this.

But it’s good to know that it’s breaking new ground in Theoretical Physics!

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#272

Post by NegativeK »

MatejKafka wrote: post #262
square_usual wrote: post #64

It's interesting to me that whenever a new breakthrough in AI use comes up, there's always a flood of people who come in to handwave away why this isn't actually a win for LLMs. Like with the novel solutions GPT 5.2 has been able to find for erdos problems - many users here (even in this very thread!) think they know more about this than Fields medalist Terence Tao, who maintains this list showing that, yes, LLMs hav…

I don't think it's about trying to handwave away the achievement. The problem is that many AI proponents, and especially companies producing the LLM tools constantly overstate the wins while downplaying the issues, and that leads to a (not always rational) counter-reaction from the other side.

The same crap happened with cryptocurrency: it was either aggressively pro or aggressively against, and everyone who could be heard was yelling as loud as they could so they didn't have to hear disagreement.

There is no loud, moderate voice. It makes me very tired of the blasting rhetoric that invades _every_ space.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#273

Post by coldtea »

woeirua wrote: post #78
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the critical bit (paraphrasing): Humans have worked out the amplitudes for integer n up to n = 6 by hand, obtaining very complicated expressions, which correspond to a “Feynman diagram expansion” whose complexity grows superexponentially in n. But no one has been able to greatly reduce the complexity of these expressions, providing much simpler forms. And from these base cases, no one was then able to spot a…

You should probably email the authors if you think that's true. I highly doubt they didn't do a literature search first though...

It's hard to get someone to do literature first when they get free publicity by not doing literature search and claiming some major AI assisted breakthrough...

Heck, it's hard to get authors to do literature search, period: never mind not thoroughly looking for prior art, even well known disgraced papers get citated continue to get possitive citations all the time...

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#274

Post by Tazerenix »

Paracompact wrote: post #124
dotancohen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relativity comes to mind. You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

I am not a scientific historian, or even a physicist, but IMO relativity has a weak case for being a completely novel discovery. Critique of absolute time and space of Newtonian physics was already well underway, and much of the methodology for exploring this relativity (by way of gyroscopes, inertial reference frames, and synchronized mechanical clocks) were already in parlance. Many of the phenomena that relativity…

You need to differentiate between special and general relativity when making these statements.

It is absolutely true that someone else would have come up with special relativity very soon after Einstein. All that would be necessary is someone else to have the wherewithal to say "perhaps the aether does not need to exist" for the equations already known at the time by others before Einstein to lead to the general theory.

General relativity is different. Witten contends that it is entirely possible that without Einstein, we may have had to wait for the early string theorists of the 1960s to discover GR as a classical limit of the first string theories in their quest to understand the strong nuclear force.

As opposed to SR, GR is one of the most singular innovative intellectual achievements in human history. It's definitely "out of distribution" in some sense.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#275

Post by turzmo »

Physicist here. Did you guys actually read the paper? Am I missing something? The "key" AI-conjectured formula (39) is an obvious generalization of (35)-(38), and something a human would have guessed immediately.

(35)-(38) are the AI-simplified versions of (29)-(32). Those earlier formulae look formidable to simplify by hand, but they are also the sort of thing you'd try to use a computer algebra system for.

I'm willing to (begrudgingly) admit the possibility for AI to do novel work, but this particular result does not seem very impressive.

I picture ChatGPT as the rich kid whose parents privately donated to a lab to get their name on a paper for college admissions. In this case, I don't think I'm being too cynical in thinking that something similar is happening here and that the role of AI in this result is being well overplayed.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#276

Post by djeastm »

fpgaminer wrote: post #68
bottlepalm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is every new thing not just combinations of existing things? What does out of distribution even mean? What advancement has ever made that there wasn’t a lead up of prior work to it? Is there some fundamental thing that prevents AI from recombining ideas and testing theories?

> Is every new thing not just combinations of existing things? If all ideas are recombinations of old ideas, where did the first ideas come from? And wouldn't the complexity of ideas be thus limited to the combined complexity of the "seed" ideas? I think it's more fair to say that recombining ideas is an efficient way to quickly explore a very complex, hyperdimensional space. In some cases that's enough to land on ne…

>If all ideas are recombinations of old ideas, where did the first ideas come from?

Ideas seem to just be our abstractions of neural impulses from deep in evolution.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#277

Post by compass_copium »

Davidzheng wrote: post #199
compass_copium wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...am I wrong in thinking that 1(a) is the relevant section here, and shows a lot of red?

I honestly don't see the point of the red data points. By now all the erdos problems have been attempted by AIs--so every unsolved one can be a red data point.

The post's author points that out as well

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#278

Post by zaphirplane »

outlace wrote: post #11

The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…

I must be a Luddite, how do you have a model working for 12 hours on a problem. Mine is ready with an answer and always interrupts to ask confirmation or show answer

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#279

Post by anon291 »

outlace wrote: post #11

The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…

Very very few human individuals are capable of making new things that are not a linear combination of existing things. Even such things as special relativity were an application of two previous ideas. All of special relativity is deriveable from the principles of relative motion (known into antiquity) and the constant speed of light (which was known to Einstein). From there it is a straightforwards application of the Pythagorean theorem to realize there is a contradiction and the lorentz factor falls out naturally via basic algebra.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#280

Post by cxvwK »

turzmo wrote: post #275

Physicist here. Did you guys actually read the paper? Am I missing something? The "key" AI-conjectured formula (39) is an obvious generalization of (35)-(38), and something a human would have guessed immediately. (35)-(38) are the AI-simplified versions of (29)-(32). Those earlier formulae look formidable to simplify by hand, but they are also the sort of thing you'd try to use a computer algebra system for. I'm will…

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